Film Reviews

Catch a Fire

• Rating:
• Director: Phillip Noyce.
• Starring: Derek Luke, Tim Robbins, Bonnie Mbuli, Terry Pheto.
• Details: South Africa / USA / France / UK / 101 mins (12A).

In South Africa in 1980, Patrick Chamusso (Luke) prefers to stay away from the political troubles that are rife in his country. He's a foreman at the local plant and needs the money to support his wife Precious (Mbuli) and his two daughters. Even when his mother is listening to Radio Freedom, the underground ANC radio station, he tells her to turn it down lest anyone hear. However, Patrick's life is turned on its head when he's arrested as a suspected terrorist as the plant is hit by the ANC. After enduring mental and physical torture at the hands of anti-terrorist specialist Nic Vos (Robbins), he's found not guilty and eventually let go. However, the experience changes Patrick forever and he signs up for the ANC, while Vos, back on his tail, tries to track him down. One feels that Noyce takes the soft option in Catch A Fire: he relies on our knowledge of apartheid as he keeps the majority of the violence off screen (we never witness Patrick being tortured - we only see the after affects). The script, by Captain Corelli's Mandolin scribe Shawn Slovo, is a story of two halves. The first half is all build-up and back-story, which Noyce translated okay, but the cat-and-mouse second half seems to have been lost on the director. It is in the second half that Slovo attempted to make a Heat style story in showing us the heroes' and villains' home lives and how their respective vocations affect their families - but Noyce, although touches on this, never gives it the full gun.

Review by Gavin Burke